The proliferation of digital channels and devices has made it more difficult for B2B marketers to accurately target prospects with the right messages, on the right devices, at the right times. Prospects are managing more of the buying process themselves, creating decision short lists by researching brand websites and social channels without ever speaking to a sales rep. To be effective, B2B marketers must be creative, targeted and aligned with sales goals; they must also have greater visibility into buyer attributes and behaviors.

Faced with these challenging market dynamics and increasing ROI pressure, B2B marketers at companies of all sizes can gain these benefits from a marketing automation platform:

• Increased marketing efficiency. Automating time-consuming, manual tasks around content creation, management and personalization; campaign scheduling and execution; data hygiene; communication with sales; and lead nurturing saves time and improves productivity.
• Enhanced ability to generate more and better qualified leads. Marketing automation can combine multiple criteria, including demographic, firmographic and behavioral data with a lead scoring system to generate and identify sales-qualified leads.
• A multichannel view of prospect behavior. Today’s marketing automation platforms are integrating multiple channels and devices including social media and mobile — to create more comprehensive prospect profiles and holistic views of prospect behavior.
• Better alignment of sales and marketing goals. Marketing automation software can help align sales and marketing efforts to ensure that sales reps are working with sales-ready leads. By working cooperatively to set scoring parameters and define qualified leads, sales and marketing become one team.
• Improved lead conversion and ROI. Numerous studies have found that using a marketing automation system can increase conversions. Forrester found that B2B marketers implementing marketing automation experience a 10% increase in their sales-pipeline contribution.

If you’re considering a marketing automation platform, this report can help you decide if you need one. “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” examines the market for marketing automation platforms and the considerations involved in implementing this software into your business.

Included in this 48-page report are profiles of 14 leading marketing automation vendors, pricing charts, capabilities comparisons and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download your copy.

The post The benefits of using marketing automation appeared first on Marketing Land.